17 Ways BuzzFeed Research Uses Qualtrics To Gain Insights

Do you have difficulty capturing responses from Gen Y / Z consumers? BuzzFeed Research has come up with some fun and unique ways to elicit responses & gain insights from our users using Qualtrics. Check this list out!

1.Let's be honest - we save a lot of money via Qualtrics vs. going directly to a market research agency!

2.But we still rely on consultants to do some of the heavy lifting

Qualtrics is great as a DIY tool and allows BuzzFeed Research to have greater control over our survey data. However, we rely on consultants like Lucid to help us program, buy sample, and tabulate our results. This allows our team to focus on other critical aspects like survey writing and analysis. We also use Qualtrics Research Services too!

3.A lot of what we do is relating to our users

BuzzFeed Research

BuzzFeed connects with our users via the relevant content our editorial team produces. We try to bring some of that in the research that we do....

4.Use animated GIFs to capture user attention

BuzzFeed Research / Via giphy

Luckily we have one of the best in-house creative teams that know how to create visuals that speak to our audience. It's super engaging and results in a high response rate.

5.OBSESSED! Garnered our huge fandoms - a little too much!

BuzzFeed / Via giphy

Take advantage of your loyal fanbase but be careful of the rabid response. We recruited superfans of the Unsolved show on the Facebook group’s feed. This resulted in 1800 completes in less than an hour, so we had to delete the post!

6.Twitter is okay, but it becomes fleeting

Twitter is okay for a short burst of responses. However, it sometimes gets lost in a user's feed so we don't see a great number of overall completes. It really depends on when it's scheduled to run and if we're stuck in-between other Tweets from your brand.

7.Utilize your Facebook audience!

BuzzFeed Research / Via giphy

Adding an embedded bit.ly Qualtrics survey link in the body of your post can greatly improve your response rate over the course of several days (as long as you have the audience!).

8.Use app push notifications (sparingly!) to recruit for IDIs

BuzzFeed Research / Via giphy

We typically send out Push Notifications to a subset of users (e.g. BuzzFeed News App, Tasty App, etc.) to recruit for in-depth-interviews / usability studies either via video-conference or in-person. This ensures we get a qualified + engaged user in order to provide valuable feedback. Sometimes we don't even need to follow-up with a call!

9.Be inclusive!

BuzzFeed Research / Via giphy

Even for respondents who do not select fluid for gender, for example, it shows that we care about them! It's also helpful when you get a request to cut the data by the LGBTQ+ audience.

10.Speak their language

BuzzFeed Research / Via giphy

BE GENUINE! Speak the way your users do.

11.Start understanding your consumer

BuzzFeed Research

With all this recruiting done, now we can begin to better understand our consumers needs, motivations, satisfaction, perceptions, etc.

12.Expand your CSAT program

BuzzFeed Research

We've gone full-force into commerce - so we need more feedback on how we're doing! Qualtrics provides us with one of the best possible survey platforms to gain insight into user satisfaction about our products.

13.Use Qualtrics to inform your product launches & editorial strategy

BuzzFeed Research

Need some help on what to focus on next? Need to figure out what drives consumers to a certain topic or behavior (like Fashion or Beauty)? We've used Qualtrics to enhance our understanding of consumers' motivations and needs.

14.Use it for brand health & positioning

Add that little something EXTRA when you're strapped and can't do full-service with your market research agency. We've been able to support marketing and editorial to gain insight into our competitive strength and weaknesses.

15.Prove your international value

BuzzFeed Research

Show you care about international markets. By conducting surveys in the UK, Brazil, Australia, Canada, and Mexico we've been able to easily run studies that prove the value of Tasty vs. our competitors in terms of recipe-making & brand perceptions.

16.It takes a village!

Taylor Miller / Via This Is How BuzzFeed New York Does Halloween buzzfeed.com

The BuzzFeed Market & Brand Research Team who each touch Qualtrics in some way. Honorable mentions (not pictured) goes to Brenna who leads UXR and Jackie who leads International Insights!